One Hour Heating & Air Conditioning®, Benjamin Franklin Plumbing® and Mister Sparky®, all part of the Direct Energy® family of brands, have released a new infographic showing the benefits of working in the plumbing, electrical and HVAC industries, how much training and education people need and earning potential. It can be found online, at FindSkilledJobs.com.
As leaders in the home services industry, those companies are hoping to change career misconceptions. They are continuing their partnership with Mike Rowe, creator, executive producer, and host of the “Somebody’s Gotta Do It” and “Dirty Jobs,” TV programs, to highlight the skilled trades industries and the people who work in them.
Many think that the only path to career success is a four-year degree, but the infographic shows trades jobs starting salaries are often higher, job satisfaction can be greater, training can be quick, and it can all be accomplished without the debt that often accompanies higher education.
ContractingBusiness.com spoke with Mike Rowe during the recent national convention for One Hour Heating & Air Conditioning, Benjamin Franklin Plumbing and Mister Sparky, to learn more about his mission to grow trade careers, and how he believes employers can better relate to, and attract, today’s younger workers. He spoke frankly about the various forces that tug at students as they face career choices.
“Parents, guidance counselors and peers are the forces that compel a kid to draw the conclusions they’re going to draw about the nature of a good job in 2016,” Rowe said, “and there have been decades of pressure toward a four-year degree. A university education is a fine thing, and I don’t have anything bad to say about it. If you can afford it, by all means do so. But it’s become so expensive, exponentially, and as so often happens, when you try to promote one thing, it often comes at the expense of something else. And it’s certainly true of education. So, when people promote a four-year degree as being a great alternative, what they really do is promote it as the best alternative for the most people; and in the context of doing that, they wind up implying that anything less will get you somewhere less,” Rowe continued.
“And over time, just the weight of that message has impacted the way people think about skilled trades. There are a lot of stigmas and stereotypes that need to be debunked. My foundation does that, and this campaign (with Direct Energy) does, too.”
Read more of this exclusive interview with Mike Rowe online, at bit.ly/MikeRoweTradesCB.